TimeRipper Read online

  Over the course of twenty years, their movement had expanded from six founder members, a splinter group from the Earth Alliance, to almost six million. Despite this fact, they still considered themselves as an underground movement. At their root, they were anarchists, but the worst kind of anarchists. Organised, well equipped, and with nothing to lose.

  In the centre of the room stood one of the few remaining original features of the castle: a stone staircase that spiralled downwards into the dark depths of the original foundations. Its dungeons.

  A magnetically sealed entry point barred access to these lower regions from all but a few privileged members.

  Six females were lined up by the barrier, each waiting patiently as the computer checked their credentials before allowing access to the mysterious depths, below.

  3.

  Orbital Platform One

  YOUSSEF WAS SITTING at his desk in his personal room, surrounded by ten large screens. Each represented an Earth Alliance main region: London, England; Paris, France; New York, USA; Kampala, Uganda; Rio, Brazil; Berlin, Germany; Sydney, Australia; Moscow, Russia; Toronto, Canada; Tehran, Iran.

  He was alone, with the doors closed. The anguish within him lay so heavy that he was certain he could feel the physical weight of it crushing him, dragging him down below the surface of reality, of normalcy. He was staring with wide, vacant eyes, shaking his head. Each screen displayed fifty inches of static. His anguish derived from the fact that these were supposed to be ‘never fail’ screens, meaning they should supply, around-the-clock, twenty-four-hour, seven-days-a-week, three-hundred-and-sixty-five-days-a-year, connectivity. They should never display pure static, not with the fail-safes and redundancies in place to keep them live.

  Fighting off the cold sweat he could feel creeping over his entire body, he leaned forward and pressed a button on his desk. The image of the woman, the same one who had greeted him on his arrival at the platform, appeared on a small screen. She was smiling. He knew it was a false smile, he could see the same anxiety that he was feeling within her expression. ‘Amanda, I’m going to need someone to find out what is happening at our main offices. I’m getting static on every channel. Surely this can’t be right!’

  ‘I’m on that right now. We’re not getting anything back from any communication relays so far.’

  ‘Have we managed to get any channels open between the other Orbital Platforms yet?’ he asked, the waver in his voice giving volume to the levels of despair he was feeling.

  ‘Only sketchy information is coming through, but we’ve had confirmation that at least seven of them are still functioning, up to now.’ She paused for a few moments, swallowing hard before continuing. ‘Sir, I’m still getting nothing from Earth Alliance headquarters.’

  He bowed his head for a moment. He had an inkling about what had happened below but didn’t want to give it a voice, just yet. ‘Have we got any satellite coverage?’

  ‘Again, sketchy sir,’ Amanda replied. ‘I’ll pass over what we have onto your screen, hang on one moment.’

  ‘Thank you, Amanda,’ he whispered. Before long, an image winked to life on one of the large screens, thankfully replacing the static of what should have been Berlin with something more pleasant.

  The image was of a city. The caption over the top of the picture identified it as Orleans, France. Nothing looked out of place. The populace was moving freely. The Slipstream was fluid, and there were vehicles in the air. Suddenly, the image began to glitch. It became fuzzy, as if the recording equipment was malfunctioning.

  It soon became apparent that it wasn’t the equipment that was to blame for the picture quality.

  The image began to shake, and Youssef watched, with interest, as the sky began to darken. Dirty, heavy, purple clouds rolled into view, undulating rapidly into the shot. Vicious thunderbolts began to form within the turbulent mass. Within seconds, the thunderbolts escaped the vicinity of the cloud and cascaded downwards, striking the city below. Explosions rocked the picture, and it looked like the power grid of the city had gone offline. The camera compensated for the loss of light by automatically brightening, thus allowing him to see what he needed to see.

  He watched as the cloud fell from the sky, enveloping the city below.

  It was difficult not to turn away as the cloud continued to roll. If this wasn’t so horrific, it would almost be funny, he thought. The cloud trundled across the city, leaving nothing in its wake. It was the only phrase he could think of to describe what he was witnessing. Nothing in its wake!

  Nothing, except dust, sand, and desolation.

  Something caught his eye. Quickly he pressed a button on his console and the video stream reversed. He watched again as the thunderbolts struck the ground, causing the explosions. In his head, he relived the moment on the Slipstream track when the explosions hit, the precursor of the purple cloud. He walked over to the screen just as the cloud dropped. He paused the playback. Holding his breath, he raised a hand to touch the image. ‘I know what it is…’ he whispered. His voice wavered as he spoke. He looked at his hand touching the screen and saw that it was shaking, violently. ‘They’re insane,’ he mumbled. ‘I don’t… I can’t believe what they’ve done!’

  He turned on his heels and exited the room, disturbing Amanda, who was busy at her desk outside his office. He took a moment to notice her, to notice the level of concentration on her face: it was the same look everyone on the station had. It was the not knowing, the uncertainty for loved ones, and the life that may, or may not, have been taken away. He needed to help these people, but right now, he didn’t know how.

  ‘I need to brief everyone as soon as possible. Get whoever you can into the main conference room ASAP. This meeting is mandatory. I’m going to need feeds to any Orbital Platforms that we know are functioning, and any locations below we’ve managed to contact.’

  ‘I’m on it now, sir’ she replied, looking back at her display unit. ‘Sir,’ she continued, a ghost of a smile on her face, Youssef thought it looked proud. ‘I just wanted to inform you that we’ve been in touch with London. It looks like they’ve come through unscathed.’

  He raised his head to the ceiling of the room and kissed his hands. ‘Thank Allah for that,’ he whispered before turning back. ‘Now get me that room.’

  ~~~~

  Twenty minutes later, the main conference room was full to capacity. Earth Alliance personnel and the few civilians on board were filling every inch of space. The murmur of quietened voices was weighing heavy as everyone hoped for news from Earth, preferably regarding loved ones.

  There were several screens on the walls displaying live linkups with the other twelve Orbital Platforms and one that was linked-up with London. These connections were grainy at best, and almost non-existent at their worst; but everyone agreed, they were better than nothing.

  Youssef was standing at the front of the room, cutting a lonely figure with his hands behind his back and his head bent low. His eyes were distant, dark, and lost. He was biting at the insides of his cheek as he ran through the news he was about to impart, in his head. He wanted to doubt the news himself, and he worried how these, good, and scared, people were going to take it.

  Before him was a portable holographic device.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he spoke. The room immediately quietened at the sound of his voice. ‘Thank you for attending this presentation with so little notice. I’m a man of few words, as most of you know, so I’ll cut straight to the chase.’

  He pressed a button on his wrist and the holographic device flickered into life. It displayed the scene of Orleans that he had been watching earlier.

  ‘I won’t apologise for the content of this video, but I’ll tell you that it’s not easy viewing. This is the only footage we currently have of the…’ he paused for a moment, thinking about what to call the devastation, wondering if he could even conjure up a name for something so hideous. ‘…event, below.’

  Even though most of the people in attendan
ce had seen it before, a shocked reverence took over the room.

  Once the video had played it course, he turned it off. The silence lay heavy in the room, like a physical presence. He regarded everyone before him, including the video screens of the other platforms, and the glitching picture of London. He swallowed and bit the inside of his cheek again, before exhaling deeply. ‘Without going too deep into the physics, or the history, of this; around two-hundred and fifty years ago, a discovery was made. This discovery became known as the Higgs-Boson Particle. It was more commonly referred to, in the day, as The God Particle. It was widely regarded that this particle was, theoretically, responsible for the Big Bang that created the universe. At the time it caused quite a stir as scientists around the globe debated whether they could, or indeed, should, attempt to re-create one of these particles in a Hadron Collider. The scientific community was concerned that it could cause localised black holes and bring about the end of all life on the planet as we know it. Needless to say, it didn’t… until now!’

  After the silence that had befallen the hall, the murmur that was now rippling through the auditorium felt deafening.

  ‘Please, please, ladies and gentlemen, I do not… sorry, we do not have time to debate any of this. I need to tell you what I know now, before anything else comes to light.’

  Youssef stared hard at his audience. His palms were sweating, and there was a queasy feeling deep in his stomach, but he knew he had to continue.

  The story must be told.

  ‘Twenty years ago, when I was a much younger man with ideals about how to change the world, I started work, straight from university, in the laboratories of the Earth Alliance…’

  4.

  Earth. Twenty years earlier.

  ‘DO YOU THINK these fields will hold? I'm not so sure,’ Youssef whispered to his colleague as he bent over the long trench of the Hadron Collider they were working on. He was holding a glowing rod in his hand that was hooked to a lead tank behind them.

  ‘I hope so,’ his female colleague replied with a smile on her face. ‘Otherwise, because of the amount of radiation coming from that tank, we can kiss goodbye to any chances of future Youssefs or Carries, that’s for sure,’ she laughed.

  He didn’t see the funny side of the joke, and he gave the tank behind them another worried glance. He looked behind the lead structure, towards the large group of people who were standing behind the glass screens, observing them. He gestured towards them with a flick of his chin. ‘They’re not stupid, are they? Stood out there, getting us to do all the dangerous stuff.’

  Carrie Millwood looked towards the glass and smiled again. ‘They’ve done their stint in here. It’s time for us to get our hands dirty,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘I just don’t trust this stuff, that’s all.’

  ‘You trust the force field, don’t you?’

  He couldn’t reply to that question. The force field she was referring to, the one that was emanating from a small box attached at both of their hips, covering their bodies in a light-yellow glow, had been his invention. It was what had gotten him his position in the Earth Alliance laboratories, straight from the University of Tehran, in the first place. It was a feat that had been relatively unheard of. Under normal circumstances, students were required to sit a two-year entrance course before they were accepted, but Youssef, as such a promising student, hadn’t needed to.

  The laboratory they were working in was vast. In it, there were another three Hadron Colliders, with two students manning each machine. The Colliders themselves were constructed of long trenches that looped around in a rectangle with rounded corners. They were encased in thick glass, and at each end were computers and monitors displaying and analysing exactly what was happening during their use. In the trenches, various atoms and particles would race around the loop while other materials were introduced at various locations along the way. The idea behind it was to see how different materials reacted as they smashed into each other at different velocities. It was this precise operation that had led to the discovery of the God Particle in the first place, all those years ago.

  Youssef and his team were experimenting on a recent breakthrough they had recorded involving the Higgs-Boson particle. Their job today was to test and refine the outcome of the experiments.

  The theory was, that if you accelerated the particle to just under the speed of sound—roughly three-hundred-and-forty meters per second—before injecting a wall of modified hydrogen for it to collide through, the hydrogen molecules would begin to act erratically. By erratically, it meant that some of the molecules disappeared while others were displaced. The displaced molecules had a habit of turning up, almost instantaneously, inside one of the other Colliders on the other side of the lab.

  It was all very exciting!

  No one could explain this phenomenon, but it interested the hierarchy enough to engage a large percentage of their best students to analyse it. Their best guess was that the Higgs-Boson particle had created an unexplained, and unexpected, vortex that teleported the molecules from one location to another.

  What had excited them, even more than the teleportation, was when the first experiment was completed and the apparatus cleaned, they came back the next day and could not explain the presence of hydrogen molecules already in the Collider. This phenomenon continued to occur after each experiment. It thrilled the scientists so much that the strangest properties regarding these displaced molecules was very nearly overlooked. The molecular structure had been altered; they were older than any of the molecules that had been prepared, ready to be used in the next experiment.

  This discovery gave light to another theory, one that had been previously thought impossible. Before anyone could get overly excited and announce this theory, or even give it a name, more investigation was warranted.

  For the next experiment, they tagged the molecules with magnetic signatures and replicate the experiment.

  As was hoped, but not entirely expected, the molecules began to act erratically. They confirmed that the ones that turned up in the other colliders were indeed the same tagged molecules.

  It seemed like teleportation had indeed been discovered; but something even more significant was recorded. The set of molecules found prior to the next experiment were analysed and found to have the same magnetic tagging signatures attached to them, but the date stamp on the tag related to four days in the future. This caused untold confusion, not to mention excitement, within the community.

  It was widely regarded that time travel could never be achieved due to the paradox theory. The theory stated that if it was to be invented then we would already know about it; but with this discovery, it seemed that paradox was about to be blown out of the water.

  ~~~~

  Only the most promising students had been recruited to work on, and hopefully expand, both discoveries. Teleportation had been chosen to be the main, and public, area of research, while time travel, although deemed to be the discovery of the last five hundred years, was given a more discreet classification.

  Youssef had been recruited directly from the University of Tehran, and his counterpart Carrie Millwood had been recruited from Cambridge University. Both were leading prospects in their fields of Quantum Physics, and they had been selected to support the fledgling research team into both phenomena. The initial work was coming along nicely. They had stabilised the teleportation. All tests had been, at least, partially positive, and they had successfully teleported various multi-cellular objects over various distances. Plans were now in place to experiment on organic tissue.

  The time travel aspect was proving more difficult. The first obstacle they hit was a quantum one. They kept finding results of experiments in the lab that they hadn’t done yet. This had proven to be mind-blowing; but the second and more pressing issue were the aftereffects of these experiments.

  At first, they had been working on a molecular level so small that the by-product of the experiments had not even registered, but
as the experiments became larger, so did the by-product.

  This became a problem.

  As a particle passed through the time barrier, there was a reaction. An extremely violent and unpredictable reaction. The mass of the by-product was directly dictated by how big the particle was and by how far back in time the particle was sent.

  Carrie Millwood had become obsessed with this.

  They called it the Higgs Storm, as it resembled rolling, stormy thunderclouds, complete with lighting. It never survived long, but it left behind it complete devastation. A void of life! Nothing could survive its brief, but destructive, power. Many pieces of expensive equipment and apparatus had been lost during the experiments.

  Then, almost inevitably, there was an accident.

  ~~~~

  ‘I just don’t trust this stuff, that’s all,’ Youssef whispered to Carrie as he injected the modified hydrogen into the receptor on the Hadron Collider.

  Carrie turned to look at him, her eyes were wide behind her mask. ‘But you do trust the force field, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, of course I do. I developed it. It’s just the Higgs-Boson particle, the radiation it emits is off the scale.’

  Today, their team was working on time travel. It was a top-secret project, and as far as he was concerned, hugely dangerous. Using his magnetic field theorem, they had developed a containment field for the destructive by-product. It worked like surface tension within the air. It created what they had dubbed a Storm Bubble. This bubble could be maintained for up to an hour, so there was plenty of redundancy in case of an emergency. There was also a redundant containment field that could detect a weakness in the first and envelop them both. They had discovered that the environment was still inhospitable for up to half an hour after the storm dissipated, so the bubble needed to contain this toxic atmosphere too.